How to create Finding Charts for Service Mode

In general, a finding chart has to be attached to each OB. Exceptions are given in the instrument-specific rules. Please read the P2PP3 User Manual for a detailed description on attaching finding charts to OBs.

General Finding Chart Requirements

Regardless of the instrument, finding charts must have all the following characteristics:

Clearly indicate the Observing Run ID.

Clearly indicate the PI Name.

Clearly indicate the OB Name or Target Name, as used in the OB to which it is attached.

The target(s) position(s) must be clearly indicated.

The entire instrument field-of-view must be shown.

North and East must be clearly indicated.

The scale must be indicated by drawing a bar and writing the bar length in arcseconds or arcminutes.

The wavelength range of the image must be indicated. Whenever possible, finding charts should have similar central wavelength to observations (e.g. DSS charts are often inappropriate for IR observations near the galactic equator).

The images should be negative, i.e. dark objects on light background.

The output files must be in JPEG format and their size must be less than 1 Mbyte.

Positions of spectroscopic acquisition reference stars, if any, should be marked.

Please verify that finding charts have sufficient quality and resolution. This can be easily done from within P2PP by using the View Finding Chart option in the Finding Charts menu of the main P2PP interface (see also the P2PP User Manual), or using p2 by attaching the finding chart and then clicking on the "thumbnail" version to see the full size version displayed in your browser.

Unified Guidecam tool for Finding Chart preparation

VISIR, MUSE and HAWK-I users shall use the unified Guidecam tool (GUCT) to prepare ESO-compliant Finding Charts. Using GUCT will also allow to directly connect to P2PP/p2 and upload the Finding Chart(s) to the OB(s) in preparation.

GUCT is now available from the ESO software repositories (see below), package name eso-guidecamtool.

Other Finding Chart tools

Alternatively, valid finding charts can be produced with any software tool able to produce output files in JPEG format. For users who do not use the new unified Guidecam tool, ESO recommends the use of the SkyCat-based finding chart tool. This tool provides a user-friendly interface to easily produce finding charts with the general characteristics described above.

FIMS, the FORS observation preparation software is a such a SkyCat-based finding chart tool. Once installed, if you only what to make finding charts, you can simly run the skycat command (that is installed alongside the fims.sh command). FIMS is now avaialble from the ESO software repositories (see below), package name eso-fors-fims-P101 (except on Ubuntu where it is eso-fors-fims-p101).

Additional rules for SPHERE finding charts

As most SPHERE targets are quite bright, Finding Charts are not required for SPHERE if there is only a single bright star within the SPHERE Field-of-View. However, Finding Charts are mandatory in cases in which positioning is critical, e.g. observations of binaries, crowded field, LSS spectroscopy, etc.

ESO Mac & Linux software repositories

For several years ESO has been providing pipelines and esoreflex via MacPorts and RPM repositories.

As of April 23rd, 2018 RPM repositories are available for several Fedora, Scientific Linux and CentOSversions and can be used under certain conditions in other RPM based distributions.

We are now in the process of extending this service, on a trial basis, to include other ESO software components, beginning with some phase 2 tools, in particular the GuideCamTool, FIMS, KARMA and FPOSS, which are now all supported both for Mac and Linux.

In addition we are providing access to an EXPERIMENTALUbuntu repository (providing Phase 2 tools only, no pipelines (yet)) and it is also possible to use the Scientific Linux 7 repository on CentOS-7 and RedHat Enterprise Linux 7 systems. See instructions for accessing these repositories below.

In case your OS/distribution is not one of the above, the phase 2 tools are still available for installation via the "traditional" tarball + install script methods. But please feel free to contact usd-help@eso.org to let us know which OS/distribution you would like supported. Obviously we cannot promise to support every single OS/distribution, but this information will help guide us in deciding where any resources that might be available in the future would be best focussed.

Currently only 64bit systems are being supported. Please contact usd-help@eso.org if you need 32bit support.

To make use of these repositories to install the available tools you will need superuser/admin user (i.e. the ability to run sudo) privilege, or else to ask you system administrator, to first install the repositories and then the tool(s).

Fedora 20-21 RPM installation

Please note, fedora 20-21 are no longer supported as of 2018-04-21. Packages are still available from the ESO repositories, but will no longer be updated.

If you have not already done so please follow the instructions to configure the ESO RPM repository here -- note if you have already installed ESO pipelines via RPM, then you probably already have the ESO repository configured and enabled.

You can test that it is working with the following command:

yum search eso-

Then to install a package:

sudo yum install <package_name>

Fedora 22-23 RPM installation

Please note, fedora 22-23 are no longer supported as of 2018-04-21. Packages are still available from the ESO repositories, but will no longer be updated.

If you have not already done so please follow the instructions to configure the ESO RPM repository here -- note if you have already installed ESO pipelines via RPM, then you probably already have the ESO repository configured and enabled.

You can test that it is working with the following command:

dnf search eso-

Then to install a package:

sudo dnf install <package_name>

Fedora 24-27 RPM installation

If you have not already done so please follow the instructions to configure the ESO RPM repository here -- note if you have already installed ESO pipelines via RPM, then you probably already have the ESO repository configured and enabled.

You can test that it is working with the following command:

dnf search eso-

Then to install a package:

sudo dnf install <package_name>

Scientific Linux 7 RPM installation

If you have not already done so please follow the instructions to configure the ESO RPM repository here -- note if you have already installed ESO pipelines via RPM, then you probably already have the ESO repository configured and enabled.

You can test that it is working with the following command:

yum search eso-

Then to install a package:

sudo yum install <package_name>

Fedora 26 & 27 RPM installation

It is possible to use the Fedora 25 RPMs on Fedora 26 & 27 systems. But please note: As the packages were not built natively for this system, there is a possibility of problems due to incompatibility, but thus far tests have been positive.

You will need to enable the Fedora 25 ESO repository. Please follow the instructions below. Please note that you will then be using packages built on Fedora 25 systems. All of our tests thus far show that these binaries behave normally, but there is always the possibility at something behaves peculilarly, or that at some point the packages even simply stop working (due to broken dependancies). Please contact usd-help@eso.org if you experience or detect any peculiar behaviour or problems with using the Fedora 25 packages on Fedora 26+ systems. Please note that this method will also give you access to the ESO pipelines via RPM installation. The same message applies: use with caution!

Please copy and paste the following instructions to install and configure the Fedora 25 ESO repository (please copy and paste the lines starting with sudo one at a time):

CentOS-7 RPM installation

If you have not already done so please follow the instructions to configure the ESO RPM repository here -- note if you have already installed ESO pipelines via RPM, then you probably already have the ESO repository configured and enabled.

You can test that it is working with the following command:

yum search eso-

Then to install a package:

sudo yum install <package_name>

RedHat Enterprise Linux 7 RPM installation

It is possible to use the Scientific Linux 7 RPMs on RedHat Enterprise Linux 7 systems. But please note: As the packages were not built natively for this system, there is a possibility of problems due to incompatibility, but thus far tests have been positive.

You will need to enable the Scientific Linux 7 ESO repository. Please follow the instructions below. Please note that you will then be using packages built on Scientific Linux 7 systems. All of our tests thus far show that these binaries behave normally, but there is always the possibility at something behaves peculilarly, or that at some point the packages even simply stop working (due to broken dependancies). Please contact usd-help@eso.org if you experience or detect any peculiar behaviour or problems with using the Scientific Linux 7 packages on centoOS 7 or RHEL 7 systems. Please note that this method will also give you access to the ESO pipelines via RPM installation. The same message applies: use with caution!

Please copy and paste the following instructions to install and configure the Scientific Linux 7 ESO repository (please copy and paste the lines starting with sudo one at a time):

Ubuntu APT installation

We are also offering Ubuntu repositories on an TRIAL, EXPERIMENTAL and best-effort-support basis. Ubuntu repositories are currently available for Ubuntu 64bit 12 LTS, 14 LTS, 16 LTS and 17.04 & 17.10. If you use our Ubuntu repositories, please consider providing feedback to usd-help@eso.org:

if you experience any problems

if your version of Ubuntu is not supported

especially if you appreciate this service and would like to see it continued and (eventually) expanded (as this will help us to motivate commiting resources to doing so...)

Please also note that Ubuntu USD-ESO repository support is (currently) only available Phase 2 preparation tool software, the ESO pipelines are not currently available from ESO for Ubuntu (though appear to be via the community at large).

Please copy and paste the following instructions to install and configure the Ubuntu USD-ESO repository (please copy and paste the lines starting with sudo one at a time):

For the technically minded: The Ubuntu packages are created from Fedora RPMs using alien.

other Debian with APT (e.g. Mint)

We are also offering Ubuntu repositories on an TRIAL, EXPERIMENTAL and best-effort-support basis. Ubuntu repositories are currently available for Ubuntu 64bit 12 LTS, 14 LTS, 16 LTS and 17.04 & 17.10.

These Ubuntu repositories can also be used by (some) other Debian systems with the APT package management system, especially if they are derived from Ubuntu, e.g. Linux Mint. You just have to work out which of our Ubuntu repositories best matches your system, for example Linux Mint 18 &apm; 18.* are based on Ubuntu 16.04 (code name xenial) while Linux Mint 17 &apm; 17.* are based on Ubuntu 14.04 (code name trusty). For example see this page for Linux Mint version information, and this page for Ubuntu code names (the codename to use is the first name in the Code name column all in lowercase).

If you use our Ubuntu repositories, please consider providing feedback to usd-help@eso.org:

if you experience any problems

if your version of Ubuntu is not supported

especially if you appreciate this service and would like to see it continued and (eventually) expanded (as this will help us to motivate commiting resources to doing so...)

Please also note that Ubuntu USD-ESO repository support is (currently) only available Phase 2 preparation tool software, the ESO pipelines are not currently available from ESO for Ubuntu (though appear to be via the community at large).

Please copy and paste the following instructions to install and configure the Ubuntu USD-ESO repository (please copy and paste the lines starting with sudo one at a time):

For the technically minded: The Ubuntu packages are created from Fedora RPMs using alien.

Generic RPM-Linux systems and Source-RPMs

Please note, that in addition to the binary RPMs avaiable from these repositories, source-RPMs are also avaialble, and it might be possible (for "expert users") to create system-specific versions of the RPMs, see e.g. the fedora-20 SRPM repo. In general the SRPMs of all the different supported versions are identical, so it usually doesn't matter which one you take.

Once you have downloaded the relevant SRPM file, you can use the rpmbuld command to rebuild the binary RPM for your distribution, e.g.:

rpmbuild --rebuild eso-flames-fposs-101.0-1.fc20.src.rpm

Mac OS X/OS X/macOS

ESO has chosen to use MacPorts for software distribution and has thus setup an official ESO MacPorts repository.

The ESO MacPorts repository currently provides BINARY packages for Mac OS X 10.9 to 10.13, though not all packages are available for all OS versions. For earlier and more recent OS versions than currently supported, using the ESO MacPorts repository is still supported for most software packages, it just means that ESO packages will be built natively on your machine from SOURCE, which in most cases just means it will take longer than required for the BINARY packages, but it should eventually get there. Some packages however are known not to work on certain Mac OS versions, and it that case even the SOURCE installation will fail, or else it is possible the installation itself will apparently succeed, but the sotware may fail to work correctly.

Once you have an up and running Macports system, please follow the procedure described in bullet point 1 here to configure the ESO MacPorts repository.

If you haven't done so within the past two weeks it is probably a good idea to also do

sudo port selfupdate
sudo port upgrade outdated

Please note that Java is not (currently) provided by any MacPorts package. Therefore you will need to install Java independently of MacPorts for any packages that require it (in particular the GuideCamTool) this is also described at the above ESO MacPort repository installation instruction page.

Once the ESO MacPorts repository is installed via the instructions above you can browse the avaiable (non pipeline) ESO packages with: